Why Use UDiligence?

Provides Ongoing Mentoring Opportunities

UDiligence searches student-athlete's social network profiles for
profanity, racial slurs, sexual connotations, and mentions of
weapons, drugs and alcohol -- alerting the student-athlete and your
department, hopefully before it is publicly exposed by the
media. Each school can customize their own keyword
list. The photo captions and comments are also searched to
help identify potentially troubling photos and videos.
Schools use UDiligence to provide ongoing mentoring for
student-athletes, all of whom are teenagers and young adults, about
the consequences of posting something that might be problematic to
their reputations and digital legacies.

The links above are just a few high-profile examples of news
stories that have exposed, embarrassed and damaged the
reputations/digital legacies of the student-athletes
involved. In some cases, the coach then banned the team from
using social media. In other cases, the student-athlete was
punished and forced to remove the offending posts and/or delete
their social media account. In all cases the
student-athlete's reputation/digital legacy was damaged when the
media publicized their social networking posts.

Prepares for Life After Sports

Whether it's the NFL, NBA or a Fortune 500 company, many employers
want to hire former student-athletes because they like the
characteristics developed by being part of a collegiate athletic
program. This advantage can be immediately nullified when
employers Google the athlete and find stories about inappropriate
social media posts or screen social network pages during the hiring
process. UDiligence finds and reports these issues to the
student-athlete and the school, giving them the opportunity to
prepare for life after college.

Serves as an Early Warning Radar

The media is following/friending student-athletes on social media
to get material for articles. It is an unfiltered funnel from
the inexperienced and unwitting student-athlete's thumbs directly
to reporters' phones and computers. Whether from a public or
private account, the media's use of student-athlete's social
network posts in their stories is protected by freedom of the
press.

While it is a reporter's job to ask coaches and athletic
departments for reaction to student-athlete's social media posts,
it is also clear that the controversial stories reporters write
result in more hits on their websites, increases in numbers of
followers on Twitter and fans on their Facebook pages.

The unfortunate result leaves the student-athlete publicly
embarrassed in the short term and their reputation permanently
damaged. The student-athletes are often suspended or punished
as the coach/department deals with the aftermath and distractions
that follow.

The only entity that benefits from stories about student-athlete's
social media indiscretions is the media. Everyone else loses:
the student-athlete, the coach, the athletic department and
sometimes even the university. Student-athletes and the
schools they represent have the right and a vested interest to
protect their reputations. UDiligence provides an early
warning radar for potential issues before they become major
distractions.